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Short Stories

Disquiet. Squirming, urgent agency: this moment is unbearable. The doorman, Bernie, has hastily shoved everyone out at exactly 2am as he always does, his fervent protection of me and the other Gordie’s staff, and of his own anticipated bedtime. It’s 2.05 now. Through the padded door, you can

Every weekend, David goes to Bavo’s Bar on Luther Street to meet the fellow members of the State Social Justice Network, or ‘Hatebusters’ as they call themselves. They plot and figure out their course of action. They elaborate, pontificate on plans to make the state great and loving again, to

Johnlee82 sent you a message. ‘Can’t wait,’ I muttered around the pen jammed in my mouth and clicked to open the envelope icon on the screen. Two days into the surreal world of internet dating and already it was becoming tedious. Eighteen new messages sat in my inbox and 567 men wanted t

The wedding was held at the Rancho del Cortes and Eva was one of twelve bridesmaids. The bride was the daughter of a wealthy benefactress of the women’s clinic Eva’s mother ran in Mexico and, for unknown reasons, Eva was asked to participate. It was a great honour, they were ‘society’, and i

First, you see the sweeping shape of a looming wave, perfect blue coming right at you, but it’s not moving. Then, as you follow the crowds of people through the room, you see that it’s not a wave, it’s a whale. You wonder what kind of whale it is, then you wonder if this beast is real or a mod

He loved Rose, he married Myrtle. The seeds of the latter event were sown in that period towards the end of his final year at university when the accumulated disappointment he had suffered at the hands of Rose had made him particularly vulnerable. Myrtle filled the vacuum which we are told nature ab

I hadn’t heard from my mother for a month. Normally she left a voicemail once a week, informing me of her and Stanley’s whereabouts, occasionally asking how I was and even more occasionally asking after my own husband. Then, all of a sudden, she announced she was in London. Could we meet for bre

The pebbles hurt the soles of her feet. She doesn’t care. Hurting is good. Pain is what she deserves. She steps into the water. The sea is deceptive. The shallow, nibbling waves with their light froth of white are not the warm waters of the Aegean. They freeze her ankles, her shins. She shuffles f